Good Friday questions

Sir, Good Friday was on 3 April. At our recent diocesan synod we had a brief ‘talk time’ in which we were posed two questions: “what has been best for your church this Lent” and “what are you looking forward to most about Easter”. My immediate response was “what

happened to Good Friday?”

It is all around us in the shops: Easter eggs are readily available throughout Lent and socalled hot-cross buns are available most of the year. No one seems to bother that they are not hot although they clearly described as such: perhaps they want to water down the cross.

These days many work on Good Friday and many do not give the Cross a glance, yet alone a second one. Even the egg of Easter egg has become secondary: they are often placed alongside chocolate bars or replaced by rabbits.

It is bad enough that the world squeezes out the Cross and sidelines the resurrection, but does the Church have to reciprocate? The negro spiritual “Do Lord remember me” reminds us that we have to bear a cross if we want to wear a crown. If we want to rise to new in Christ we must first die with him.

Strangely this can be done partially but you still cannot have one without the other.

The whole thing is like quoting half a verse as Bishop Benn reminded us a little earlier at our Diocesan Evangelical Fellowship. He twice took his superior to task in quoting from the woman taken in adultery. The other had quoted “No more do I condemn you”: Benn had had to point out that it was followed by “Go and Sin no more”.

Colin Bricher, Northampton